The greatest thing about Sigourney Weaver and the rest of the cast members who played members of the Griffith family is that in making Prayers For Bobby they did not succumb to the temptation of making a caricature of their character. It's been done before, it would have been so easy, the religious right gives you so much material.
But the Griffith family Harry Czerny, Sigourney Weaver and their children aren't bad people. All they have done is sit back quite comfortably on the assurance of their faith that GLBT people are not quite normal, they are afflicted with some deadly mind disease that God does not approve of. And there a lot of people who will go to their graves thinking that, though the amount shrinks as time goes on.
You can have a lot of smug assumptions until the problem hits home with you. Which is what happens to the Griffith family when young Ryan Kelley as Bobby Griffith comes out to his brother who promptly rats him out to his mother. After that its the attempts to search for a cure or as writer Wayne Besen has so aptly put it, 'pray the gay away'.
I've known a lot of people who were survivors of such colossal ignorance as preached by the religious right. Here in my native Buffalo, I know one young man who moved here two years ago and he grew up in the Assemblies of God Church. It took him a long time to break free and realize his self worth, but his is a lot happier a story than what happens to Mary Griffith and her son.
Another man whom I had a relationship with back in New York when I lived there was a survivor of electroshock treatment. It was thought that would cure him by his parents who were from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. It was this or kick him out of the house and disown him which is what eventually happened. I'm sure they thought they were doing the best for their kid.
When I worked at Crime Victims Board I had a mugging case of a young kid in Central Park. But what had happened to him was that he had come out to his enlightened parents and they threw him out of the house. This was not a street smart kid, he lived on the upper east side of Manhattan and went to prep school. He was staying in Central Park that night and got mugged and I got the case from a shelter in New York. I know his plans were to go to a girl's house he knew where her parents were more accepting eventually. I never did find out if he made it.
I can tell you first hand that the Griffith experience is far from an isolated one. Gay/Lesbian/BiSexual/Transgender youth are far more at risk for suicide than their straight peers. But what makes the Griffith story unique is how they and especially Mary Griffith took a mind numbing tragedy and turned it into a position of advocacy for those who too often don't get it. That is the challenge that Sigourney Weaver in her performance shows that Mary Griffith and her family met and overcame.
Sigourney's final speech before her small town council advocating plans for a Gay Pride Day will move all of you. It might even cause some on the religious right to question their smug assumptions about us. That is my prayer for Bobby.
And this film review is dedicated to all of the case examples I knew from my professional and personal life and to one other. A young lady from Warsaw, New York who had the courage to break from her fundamentalist family and seek love and acceptance in a wider more tolerant place on this globe. I wish I had her guts when I was a teen.
But the Griffith family Harry Czerny, Sigourney Weaver and their children aren't bad people. All they have done is sit back quite comfortably on the assurance of their faith that GLBT people are not quite normal, they are afflicted with some deadly mind disease that God does not approve of. And there a lot of people who will go to their graves thinking that, though the amount shrinks as time goes on.
You can have a lot of smug assumptions until the problem hits home with you. Which is what happens to the Griffith family when young Ryan Kelley as Bobby Griffith comes out to his brother who promptly rats him out to his mother. After that its the attempts to search for a cure or as writer Wayne Besen has so aptly put it, 'pray the gay away'.
I've known a lot of people who were survivors of such colossal ignorance as preached by the religious right. Here in my native Buffalo, I know one young man who moved here two years ago and he grew up in the Assemblies of God Church. It took him a long time to break free and realize his self worth, but his is a lot happier a story than what happens to Mary Griffith and her son.
Another man whom I had a relationship with back in New York when I lived there was a survivor of electroshock treatment. It was thought that would cure him by his parents who were from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. It was this or kick him out of the house and disown him which is what eventually happened. I'm sure they thought they were doing the best for their kid.
When I worked at Crime Victims Board I had a mugging case of a young kid in Central Park. But what had happened to him was that he had come out to his enlightened parents and they threw him out of the house. This was not a street smart kid, he lived on the upper east side of Manhattan and went to prep school. He was staying in Central Park that night and got mugged and I got the case from a shelter in New York. I know his plans were to go to a girl's house he knew where her parents were more accepting eventually. I never did find out if he made it.
I can tell you first hand that the Griffith experience is far from an isolated one. Gay/Lesbian/BiSexual/Transgender youth are far more at risk for suicide than their straight peers. But what makes the Griffith story unique is how they and especially Mary Griffith took a mind numbing tragedy and turned it into a position of advocacy for those who too often don't get it. That is the challenge that Sigourney Weaver in her performance shows that Mary Griffith and her family met and overcame.
Sigourney's final speech before her small town council advocating plans for a Gay Pride Day will move all of you. It might even cause some on the religious right to question their smug assumptions about us. That is my prayer for Bobby.
And this film review is dedicated to all of the case examples I knew from my professional and personal life and to one other. A young lady from Warsaw, New York who had the courage to break from her fundamentalist family and seek love and acceptance in a wider more tolerant place on this globe. I wish I had her guts when I was a teen.